Assessing Situation Awareness in Different Space Teleoperation Tasks Using Eye-Tracking

Situation Awareness (SA) is pivotal for the efficient control of manipulators in space teleoperation. However, there are currently few studies on using eye-tracking technology to assess SA in space teleoperation scenarios. To address this gap, our study evaluates SA during space teleoperation by utilizing eye-tracking technology, which stands out as a non-intrusive, real-time, and objective method of cognitive process assessment. The study employs Unity3D to construct a VR platform for simulating typical scenarios of space teleoperation tasks. Three indices, including rate of extra distance travelled, completion time, and operation efficiency, are used to assess SA to analyze the fixation times on different areas of interest (AOIs) within the display interface under simple scenario and complex scenario. One-way ANOVA results indicate significant differences in AOI 3 (a spatial context view of the manipulator) and AOI 4 (video footage from a distant camera) under simple scenarios, and only in AOI 3 under complex scenarios. The study concludes that optimizing the display interface layout aids in quicker perception, understanding, and prediction of teleoperation information, thereby enhancing SA.